The Fascistic Myth of Trump’s Special Connection to “Real America”

The mainstream political discourse needs to stop perpetuating ideas that form the bedrock of the extremist ethno-religious movement that has galvanized behind Trump

This is the second part of my reflection on how justifications for CNN’s Trump town hall reveal the deeper pathologies and fallacies that have characterized the Trump discourse since 2016. If you haven’t, please check out Part I, in which I focused on the steady normalization of extremism and misleading myths of liberal “echo chambers.”

The morning after his network had treated the man who tried to end democracy and constitutional government in an attempted self-coup as a “normal” candidate and staged a spectacle in accordance with the preferences of America’s leading demagogue, CNN chairman Chris Licht was unperturbed by criticism from within and without. In a network-wide editorial call on May 11, he presented the decision to organize a town hall with Donald Trump in front of a decidedly sympathetic audience as a journalistic service of the highest importance to the American public.

I wrote last week about how justifications for CNN’s Trump town hall reveal the deeper pathologies and fallacies that have characterized the Trump discourse since 2016: The steady normalization of extremism, misleading myths of liberal “echo chambers,” and the perpetuation of ethno-religious “real Americanism.” I have more to say about that last point, the ideology of “real Americanism,” as it provides the foundation for the anti-democratic radicalization of the Right, forms the basis of its constant normalization in the mainstream political discourse, and helps explain why the institutions tasked with defending democracy have such a hard time mounting an effective counter against the authoritarian threat.

“While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story,” Chris Licht said in the editorial call, “because the people in that audience represent a large swath of America. And the mistake the media made in the past is ignoring that those people exist. Just like you cannot ignore that President Trump exists.”

There is a lot to unpack here. By “the people in that audience,” Licht referred to those who were all in on Trump, who cheered him on – representatives of the conservative base, Trump’s power bloc on the Right. Since the Republican primaries in 2015/16, these people have been unwavering in their support for and personal loyalty to Trump. Licht wants us to believe they speak for “a large swath of America” – a sizable portion, maybe even a majority, that is otherwise ignored, forgotten, due to the ignorance and arrogance of educated, mostly liberal elites in coastal urban centers. In this view, the MAGA movement is comprised of “regular folks” – a loaded term – to which Trump has a special connection. Therefore, the mainstream media has a duty to provide a prominent platform to Trump and his base because Trump embodies and gives voice to a populist uprising of “real America.”

There is little empirical evidence to back up either of these claims - neither the “large swath” nor the “previously ignored” part stand on firm factual ground. Trump didn’t ride a populist majority into the White House, but a minority that was geographically spread out in a way that was ideally suited to one of the political system’s key non-majoritarian features, the electoral college. It’s also quite bizarre to describe Trump’s supporters as the forgotten and ignored: No other group has gotten more attention from mainstream media institutions and in the political discourse in general since at least 2016.  

And yet, the idea that those who voted for Trump, those who still prefer him over every other Republican politician, represent a silent and/or silenced mass of “regular folks” who somehow embody the soul of America is widely held, well beyond the executive suites of CNN. Evidently, it cannot be refuted by numbers and data. That’s because we aren’t looking at empirical statements, but ideological claims. They are based on a widespread ideology of “real Americanism” that is centered around an essentialist view of who gets to represent the nation. Trump voters are assigned a special importance: As they are overwhelmingly white and share certain reactionary sensibilities, they qualify as “authentic” Americans. If you speak for them, as Trump supposedly does, it is your prerogative to have your message amplified.

Even when it’s acknowledged that these “real Americans” are not an outright majority, we are asked to regard them as a minority that has a right to dominate our attention as much as it has a right to power in this country regardless of its numerical status. This claim manifests, for instance, in the pervasive “heartland” idea, which isn’t a place as much as it is a heavily ideological concept implying authentic Americanism for some people in certain regions, but not for others: It never applies to multicultural urban centers, only to predominantly white rural areas; people of color in Chicago or Milwaukee are never “heartlanders,” nor are progressive students who live in Ann Arbor – but conservative white Christians who live somewhere in rural Kansas definitely are. The American political discourse constantly prizes their anxieties and political preferences over everything else. It is the reason why we were inundated with “Here are the people who still support Trump” stories when his approval rating was abysmal during his presidency, but we hardly ever get any attention for Biden voters. It was even more pronounced under Obama: Absolutely no interest in how Black people saw him and his presidency, why they might not have liked everything he did or didn’t do, but stuck with him anyway. What we got instead was lots of disappointed white folks from the “heartland,” the voices of “real America.”

The ideology of “real Americanism” is apparent in the way that white Christian conservatives are coded as “regular folks,” in the pervasive assumption of a white conservative “normal” that still governs the American political and cultural discourse. Once we start paying attention to how it distorts the picture, we find it everywhere – the near-ubiquitous perpetuation of a political, social, and cultural hierarchy of conservative white domination.

“Parents,” “working class,” “Christians” – whenever such categories are used without any qualifier, they basically come with a silent “white.” Because “white” is still widely seen as normal, as the norm: as what really counts and defines the nation. Think of the way angry white reactionaries who storm school board meetings are described as “concerned parents” – but Black parents are special interest groups and progressive educators are “activists.” Or think of the way “working class” is often just shorthand for “white people with certain reactionary cultural sensibilities” – as in: “The working class rebelled against the establishment and voted for Trump.” At best, the terms “blue collar” and “working class” might refer to a type of professional occupation of white people. But even then, they are often entirely detached from matters of class and actual socio-economic status.

The - sometimes implicitly accepted, but more often specifically intended - effect of using the term “working class” in this way is to legitimize the actions of reactionary white people and insulate them from critique: They are just “regular folks,” their gripes must be justified. Much of the attractiveness of the hard-to-kill myth that it was “the working class” lifting Trump into the White House stems from exactly this: Just like that, supporting Trump has nothing to do with race, but is the manifestation of legitimate grievances of those down there directed at the arrogant elite.

It is the ideology of “real Americanism” that defines the parameters of who gets derided as “arrogant elite” and who gets celebrated as “regular folks.” This is one of the most striking features of the American political discourse: In determining whether or not something counts as extravagant or aloof, the socio-economic dimension is almost entirely ignored – what counts are the cultural sensibilities of conservative white people.

When people can afford to invest in massive vehicles, a collection of tactical gear, and all sorts of weaponry, this is seldom discussed as the extravagant lifestyle of white conservatives – as opposed to, say, liberal elites indulging in “luxury items” like e-bikes. Parading the expensive insignia of a rightwing “freedom” in public? Must be “regular folks” demonstrating their frustration with the liberal elite-run Big Government infringing on their right to be left alone. In that way, the conventions of political terminology are often entirely in line with the self-description of rightwing America.

Since Trump’s base aggressively displays all the racial, ideological, cultural, and geographical markers that are coded as “authentic” within the ideological construct of “real Americanism,” it is assumed to be representing the essence of the nation. By extension, Trump, their leader, is treated as if he, who speaks for them, has a special connection to the heart and soul of America. This assumption has shaped the coverage of Trump and the way America’s political and civic institutions have approached him. It is, I suspect, also a key reason why there is always such an intense focus on Trump’s feelings, his mood, his anger – something that historian Larry Glickman has consistently called out as problematic. Beyond just being a strategy to generate ratings and clicks, the decision to emphasize Trump’s emotional state is predicated on the idea that he is in tune with the base and thereby becomes not just a window into what “regular folks” feel but a vessel for the frustrations and anxieties of “real America.”

Trump’s ability to “read the room,” get a feel for his audience, and give them what they want has always been described as his political superpower, his “genius.” There is something real there. What separates Trump from wannabe-authoritarian like Ron DeSantis, who are attempting Trumpism without Trump, is the fact that he doesn’t have to work hard to convince the rightwing base that he is their man. Trump doesn’t simply say “I hear you” – he goes up on stage and leaves no doubt that he is at least as angry as his supporters, and they trust him to be angry *at the right kind of people*, all those “others” who should shut up and know their place. He is the perfect avatar and leader of a movement defined by white grievance. It is the basis for MAGA America’s personal loyalty to Trump, something no other potential GOP candidate possesses; and it allows Trump a lot more leeway to go off script and deviate from Paul Ryan-style Republican orthodoxy – even if that’s almost entirely confined to Trump’s rhetoric, rather than his actual governing record.

Grappling with Trump’s specific relationship to the conservative base is therefore important if we want to understand the situation on the Right. But investigating the cult of personality around Trump is not the same as mythologizing it, acknowledging the MAGA movement’s bonds of personal loyalty to its leader is different from perpetuating the idea that Trump is not only able to tap into the soul of the nation – but manifests it as an embodiment of “authentic” America.

Such ideas are very much in line with the fascistic assumption that Trump personifies the real Volk (I am using the German term deliberately here): He speaks for it, it speaks through him. He is not just the tribune giving voice to the people, he is one with the people. My argument is not that the media is fascist – only that mainstream media narratives are laundering and perpetuating certain ideas and ideologies that form the bedrock of the extremist ethno-religious movement that has galvanized behind Trump.

The fact that a radicalizing reactionary minority is committed to clinging to power by establishing authoritarian minority rule constitutes the core threat to democracy in America. This reactionary political project is helped along by the many anti-majoritarian distortions in the political system – and by a political culture and collective imaginary in which those anti-democratic features are constantly duplicated and exacerbated.

In a democratic society, the political media should strive to reveal, question, and criticize those anti-democratic ideas that privilege a certain group as the real Volk and the claims by pseudo-populist leaders to be representing the “authentic” people. The coverage of Trump and the justifications for the CNN town hall should serve as a reminder that all too often, the opposite is happening. And that’s unlikely to change, certainly not in time for the next presidential election. We have been having this exact debate for many years. At this point, we are looking at a complete inability and/or unwillingness to “learn” – because financial incentives, ideological preferences, and the dogmas of neutrality-theater journalism all point in the same direction. It’s futile to keep shouting “Have they learned nothing?!” They evidently haven’t – or, more precisely: They reject the lessons the (small-d) democratic camp wants them to learn. The mainstream media is not coming to the rescue of American democracy. The struggle against both Trump the person and Trumpism the political formation will have to be won in spite of a media environment that provides fertile ground for this kind of rightwing extremism.

However, the problem extends well beyond the media ecosystem, as most mainstream institutions of America’s political and civic life have proven similarly unwilling and/or unable to question their assumptions and change their approach. The reactionary assault will have to be defeated even though exactly the wrong “lessons” from Trumpism’s rise are still festering in the broader public imaginary, loom large in the political discourse, and continue to shape the diagnosis of many of the country’s key civic institutions – thereby significantly stifling their response to the threat of authoritarian minority rule.